Sucky bludgers can get bent

[Kiwi]

The shipping company was a corp sponser for the Red Cross, they donate $$ each year and then do a company wide collection and match employee contributions. Considering there is well over 100 000 employees world wide, they make bank just from our company.

Now I have a personal issue with this chairty that I will not go into (its fratching) and I choose not to support them. I have always supported locally run charity and usually pick two a year to support. For a few years it was breast cancer, then junvinlle diabetes etc. I donate money and time for these charities but I always try to stay with mainly grass roots stuff.

I did not donate last year at the collection and was told by many people that I was a "horrible and selfish" person for not helping those in need.

The same people were shocked to learn that I had taken an UNPAID day of leave to stand on the street for 8 hours and collect for one of my pet chairites. Gee just because you dont support your employers charity your a disgusting human being

my boss didnt speak to me for TWO days after I refused to donate, and the woman collecting didnt speak to me for a month... this was after she had stood OVER me and demanded I donate "at least something" and got even more pissy when I told her that her attitude was one of the main reasons I wouldnt donate!

[Crazeyal]

Good for you! Peer pressure is one of the LEAST effective methods of making me charitable.

[Tigress]

Costumes! WHERE!?

Happen to have a website somewhere I can oogle and maybe sweet talk the husband into getting stuff?

Ask and ye shall recieve.

[Ironclad Alibi]

my boss didnt speak to me for TWO days after I refused to donate, and the woman collecting didnt speak to me for a month...

Now why didn't I get that sort of welcome reaction when I refused to donate? I would have welcomed the peace and quiet.

[portia911]

This united way outfit sounds awful. Like some kind of bullying, cult like scam. Sounds like they have cornored the corporate market too

[eltf177]

This united way outfit sounds awful. Like some kind of bullying, cult like scam. Sounds like they have cornored the corporate market too

They _had_, until both the national scandal and (I'd forgotten) another scandal with the Washington DC chapter a couple of years later. That cost them a _lot_ of corporate clients as well as the Federal Employee Fund Drive, which they still haven't gotten back. Google 'United Way Scandal' and you'll find a lot! I'd forgotten the President of Giant Food (a local grocery store chain) forced his employees to donate or he threaten their jobs!

[MrSmiley]

CPU Cycle for SCIENCE!(tm) donation

For the past couple of years my father has had some *issues* with charities like (but not necessarily the same as) the United Way and the Salvation Army. I had always kindof wondered why he harbored bad feelings and this thread has given me a glimpse of what it might be. Now that I reflect I can remember being "bullied" (not to a major degree) by co-workers I've had in the past and even back in school when they'd ask us to do those pledge drives for one thing or another, or sell chocolate bars.

Thanks for everyone to posting these and I especially liked the posts about donating discounted/free services from the normal course of business.

So let me get SPAMmy with my own idea for a minute here... Feel free to ignore the following all inside the quote tags...

I know of a quick way to get that "feel-good" feeling by not doing much: Donate Computer Cycles. The service is called BOINC at the University of Berkeley, CA and let's one use "unused computer time", such as when your screensaver comes on, when you've stepped away for coffee or when you're using a fancy 2ghz computer to soley surf customersuck.com, and apply it to raw mathematical number crunching used by various scientific projects. It even works well (and unobtrusively) on computers that are being used completely for a cash register or advertisement display purposes.

Scientific Projects are listed here and support a variety of different fields of study.

Without going into too much tech detail... on a computer one can take a look at the task manager/process manager and look at the item marked System Idle Time. That's all unused computer power. As long as you have permission/access to install on a computer running Windows, MacOS or Linux... it's easy to set up in one of two ways: The first being to do number crunching when the screensaver comes on. You were bored of those bending lines anyway right? The second is to try to do number crunching ALL the time... but getting program other than it priority. Either of these two methods will probably "donate" quite a bit during the normal course of any work day.

What's the downside? Well, number crunching DOES keep the cpu of a computer "in use" for longer periods of time. This can result in it wearing out faster (though in general you'll probably have a lot of other computer problems before the CPU dies). It can also generate more heat and not go into "low power mode" as often and for that reason is not recommended for use on a laptop unless you know what you're doing to regulate those factors. Also it currently does not auto-update so it's a good idea to check every the website every 6 months or so.

No guilt. Just a VERY simple way to do something for someone else and with very low-effort and low-maintenance on the user's part. Sorry for being a We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread... already in progress...